If there’s one thing you must read today, it’s this: an expose in The Guardian, detailing the Chicago Police’s secret “black sites,” inspired by Guantanamo Bay and used to illegally detain American citizens.

According to the Guardian, a “nondescript” warehouse in Chicago’s Homan Square is used by the CPD for work they would like to keep “off-the-books,” particularly work that happens to violate the Constitution. “It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place,” Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes told The Guardian. “If you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” being subjected to the following treatments:

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.

Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.

Shackling for prolonged periods.

Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.

Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

You sure this wasn’t Abu Ghraib?

Or even Gitmo?

The article’s author, Spencer Ackerman, recently published another expose about the Chicago police, in which he accused an award-winning Chicago detective of engaging in horrific acts of interrogation and torture, including “shackled suspects to walls for extended periods, threatened their family members, and perhaps even planted evidence on them.” The detective, Richard Zurley [Zuley, actually], eventually transferred these tactics to Guantanamo Bay, where he “oversaw a shocking military interrogation that has become a permanent stain on his country.”

The examples of abuse in the article date from 2012 and 2013, well within the reign of Rahm Emanuel. I wonder if he recommended Det. Zuley to Obama for employment at Guantanamo?

Obama sure seems grateful.

PS: The original Grauniad article suggest the black site has been operational since the late 90s—so it could well have served as the model for Bush’s medieval torture chambers. Thanks for the suggestion, Chicago!

The Land of Lincoln [Illinois] has accrued a $111 billion unfunded liability for government workers’ pensions—up 75% from five years ago. There is an additional $56 billion of unfunded debt to cover health benefits for the state’s retirees. Illinois today is already spending more of its general fund on pensions than on K-12 education. One in four tax dollars pays for its retired workers’ benefits. Last year the state had to defer paying $7 billion owed to contractors. All this after Democrats in 2011 raised income taxes and corporate taxes by 67% and 30%, respectively.

…

The level of debt is staggering. According to a recent report by Statista Inc., Illinois residents owe $24,959 each as their share of the outstanding bonds, unfunded pension commitments and budget gaps the state has accumulated. Thank goodness this obligation doesn’t go on my credit report, or my credit rating would be in the tank along with the state’s A-minus bond rating, the worst of any state in the nation.

It is no wonder that 850,000 people have left Illinois for other states in the past 15 years, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. Or that Illinois has become one of the most business unfriendly states in the country (40th in a recent Forbes survey).

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Crushing debt isn’t just Illinois’s problem. According to State Budget Solutions, America’s 50 state governments collectively owe $5.1 trillion, including outstanding bonds, unfunded pension commitments and budget gaps. California has by far the largest debt—$778 billion—more than twice that of No. 2, New York, with $387 billion in red ink.

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It may be a coincidence, but the eight lowest debt-per-resident states have Republican governors.

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The message of the midterm elections last month was that Americans want to put the era of fiscal irresponsibility and economic stagnation in the rearview mirror. I’m hoping that Bruce Rauner, the Republican elected governor of deep-blue Illinois, will show them how it can be done.

Talk about a non sequitur! Where did that happily ever after come from? I’m as hopeful as anyone that this country has changed course, but that’s not very hopeful. How do you fund the unfunded when the size of the unfunded dwarfs any source of funding? Scoot over, Detroit. There’ll be a lot more municipal defaults and reworked pension deals—all of them in Democrat strongholds—before this undigested mess passes.

PS: How does Illinois’ pension liability increase 75% in five years? I can’t even begin to comprehend.

Republican Bruce Rauner has his work cut out rehabilitating Illinois from years of liberal-public union misrule, but now he may also have to cope with a willful state judiciary. Consider a lower court judge’s slipshod ruling last week striking down de minimis pension reforms.

The fiscally delinquent state has accrued a $111 billion unfunded pension liability—a 75% increase from five years ago—in addition to $56 billion in debt for retiree health benefits. Incredibly, the state is spending more of its general fund on pensions than on K-12 education. One in four tax dollars pays for retirement benefits. Last year the state had to defer $7 billion in bills to contractors. This is after Democrats in 2011 raised income and corporate taxes by 67% and 30%, respectively. Little wonder that Illinois has the nation’s worst credit rating.

They could be twins, couldn’t they? And Chicago has a hell of an art museum if they need to sell off a few Old Masters to pay for the golden decades of a few SEIU purple-shirted, pinkie-ringed thugs.

Give Illinois credit (albeit CCC- credit) for trying to trim a few microns of fat from its liabilities.

It’s the thought that counts:

Yet Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge John Belz last week rejected all pension trims as a violation of the state Constitution, which holds that “[m]embership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.” According to Judge Belz, there is “no legally cognizable affirmative defense” for impairing pensions benefit.

Except, well, 80 years of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Federal courts have established that states may invoke their police powers to impair contracts. In the 1934 case Home Building & Loan Association v. Blaisdell, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that emergencies “may justify the exercise of [the State’s] continuing and dominant protective power notwithstanding interference with contracts,” which the U.S. Constitution otherwise prohibits.

The Supreme Court has since developed a balancing test that allows states to impair contracts when it is reasonable and necessary to serve an important public purpose. The level of legal scrutiny increases with the severity of the impairment.

A contract cannot be binding if it promises something that was not the contract’s to promise. Generous retirement benefits are not generous to the fewer and fewer workers who are left to pay for them; not generous to the poor who are left with fewer services; not generous to outsiders who are tapped to pay for the contracted benefits when the local authority runs out of money, even though they had no say in how those benefits were granted, therefore no duty toward the recipients’ retirement condos in Boca.

If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.

With the facts showing the practice unsustainable, and the law showing the practice unsupportable, what is left?

Table-pounding appeals to our fairness and humanity. Whenever I hear that, I always check to see that my wallet is still in my pocket. We the taxpaying public have met our obligations toward the social contract. What about the obligations of those on the receiving end who took too much? Isn’t their position motivated by greed? Why can’t they be shamed for taking from the poor and vulnerable?

And what in G-d’s name is sacrosanct in a contract between two conflicted parties, the unions and decades of corrupt one-party Democrat rule? One side lavishes excessive benefits on the other in exchange for kickbacks in the form of campaign contributions and votes.

At least 12 people have been shot in Chicago since Friday afternoon, including a 13-year-old boy fatally shot on the West Side and a 3-year-old boy critically wounded on the Southwest Side, authorities said.

The 3-year-old was shot in the 4400 block of South Sacramento Avenue about 10:15 p.m., authorities said.

…

Earlier, the 13-year-old was one of seven people, most of them teenagers, shot in 700 block of South California Avenue about 6 p.m., police said.

Also this evening, a 24-year-old man was shot in the left foot and buttocks in the 1800 block of East 79th Street about 9 p.m. and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in good condition. Someone opened fire from a dark sedan, police said.

About 12:30 a.m., someone shot a 19-year-old man in the Roseland neighborhood. The man was sitting in a car at 102nd Street and Michigan Avenue when someone shot at him. He walked into Roseland Community Hospital with a graze wound to his arm, police said.

Someone shot a 19-year-old man near 39th Street and Prairie Avenue in the Bronzeville neighborhood about 12:55 a.m. He was taken to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County with a wound to his upper arm. No one is in custody.

A 24-year-old man was shot in the 5600 block of West Chicago Avenue in the Austin neighborhood about 1:35 a.m. He walked into West Suburban Medical Center with a gunshot wound to his hip, police said.

Check back for updates.

Oh, we will, you can be sure.

PS: Our exercise comparing Chicago and Gaza doesn’t quite work. The gang violence in Chicago is more comparable to the internecine fighting between Hamass and Feh-tah in the good old days.

To get a sense of the President of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, watch this (probably not in the office):

Nice, right? Just the sort of person you want in charge of your child’s education. So maybe Mayor is a better title for her?

Karen Lewis’ potential bid for Chicago Mayor has moved beyond just a thought — it’s an “organic,” growing movement, the fiery Chicago Teachers Union president said.

Lewis revealed on Monday she already has an unofficial exploratory committee in the works, a chairperson has been named and her camp is working to have a representative in each of the city’s 77 neighborhoods.

Since an Early & Often poll released Sunday put Lewis at a 9-percentage-point advantage over Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Lewis’ phone has been ringing non-stop, she said.

“They’ve been coming from all over the country,” Lewis said in an interview Monday. “Facebook is blowing up. Twitter is blowing up.”

Lewis lashed out at Emanuel camp’s initial response to the poll published by the Sun-Times political portal. An Emanuel political spokesman called the poll numbers “laughable.”

“There are a variety of ways to look at these problems, but laughable isn’t one of them,” said Lewis, the mayor’s top critic during the closing of 50 schools. “That is how people feel — that they’ve been laughed at and ignored.”

Lewis said she’s still not made a final decision on whether to enter the contest.

But she is already thinking about strategy. That involves drilling down to the community level on resident concerns and having a representative for each of the city’s 77 official community areas.

Perhaps she can be President of the United States someday. Foreign leaders can imagine her in jail, sitting on one of those little toilets.

Every so often, I search the web for news of some of my favorite topics: Detroit’s bankruptcy; Mexican drug cartels; National Health Service atrocities; Chinese coal mining disasters, etc. I am rarely disappointed.

Yesterday, GunsSaveLives.com published a story about a mass shooting in Chicago. They reported that on Monday night, six people were shot in the Windy City at a laundromat. They included teenagers, and according to the Chicago Tribune, all are on the road to recovery.

The coverage raised the question of how six people could be shot and wounded in a single incident in the United States and get minimal press. It was uncanny, to say the least. A man walked up to a laundromat in Chicago and pulled the trigger an estimated 19 times, according to witnesses. How was this not all over the news?

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There were over 80 documented shootings in Chicago in this timeframe [between the UCSB shooting and June 4, the date of this story]. These include fatalities, botched robberies, and gangland killings.

…

Why is this information not causing a firestorm among politicians and the media? Why has this information not been brought to the attention of the public? Where is the outrage?

One might well wonder:

There are three very possible answers to this question, and they are not mutually exclusive.

The first is that Chicago is the seat and the base of the Democratic political machine in the United States. It is the bastion of state controlled, tax-burdened, socialist capital which helps choose the nation’s Democratic leaders. Chicago is the throne of the Empire of the Donkey.

Chicago is also home, until recently, of the most stringent gun laws in the country. There was no ownership of handguns, there was no concealed carry, and there was no way for law-abiding people to protect themselves except to call the police. That is how the Democrats want it, and Chicago is where they had it.

The changes to allow law abiding Chicagoans to arm themselves have not yet taken full effect, and it will be interesting to watch the changes in the city once they do. Chicago cannot and will not accept these changes wholeheartedly. The city which represents the Democratic idea of industrial socialism and state monopoly of force will never fully respect or abide such a fundamental right as of citizens to arm themselves.

Second, Chicago already has tough gun laws. How can these crimes happen if those guns are illegal? The reaction of the media and the liberal politicians is for the most part to plug their ears and sing loud gibberish whenever a gun rights advocate brings up Chicago. They do not want to hear that their unarmed citizens are at risk; it is inconceivable. The shooter in the laundromat incident fired 19 shots; anything holding 19 shots is illegal in Chicago. Criminals do not seem to care about the restrictions placed upon them by the government, but they do seem to take advantage of them.

Lastly, Chicago is the city where Barack Obama himself helped craft the gun laws which are choking the ability of law-abiding citizens there to defend themselves. It was his policies, and it was his efforts that helped keep Chicagoans disarmed in the face of rising violent crime. According to a piece by Brietbart.com, Obama himself declared that the type of laws Chicago had were the type of laws he wanted to pass on a national level. Magazine bans, “assault rifle bans,” background checks and licensing already exist in Chicago, just as they do for the most part in California where the Isla Vista shootings took place. Bringing attention to the gun violence in Chicago potentially hurts Obama, and that is something the liberal media cannot let happen.

I would also add that the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators and victims of Chicago’s epidemic of gun violence are black. This is an inconvenient and profoundly sad truth.

And while you’re at it, we also need to hear from you about all the ways you’re working around the clock to keep more innocent people from being killed in Chicago.

Seven killed, 23 hurt over the last weekend? Eleven more shot on Monday?

These are headlines we expect out of Syria, not The Windy City.

Seriously, what will it take for our country to recognize that there is an all-out war being waged on its soil?

Someone white dying? Nope, Sandy Hook took care of that and WE STILL ARE NO WHERE.

…

Too many of our men simply aren’t there for them, and every day we see evidence of this: they’re abandoning their kids, dropping out of school, going (or returning) to prison and falling victim to violent crimes at the hands of one another in cities like Chicago and states like Louisiana.

I believe that if we fix the men we fix the kids, male and female.

If we fix the men we fix the household.

If we fix the household we fix the community.

We in the white mainstream, liberal or conservative, may be discomfited by this straight talk. But if we are to have these long-awaited “conversations on race” (20 years overdue), are we to silence voices that live on the front lines, as it were?

The facts are that despite Chicago’s strict gun laws (Fox Butterfield, is that you?), gun crimes are proliferating, and black people are suffering the consequences, unto death. What do we plan to do about it? Besides nothing, that is.

Odeh, who is in her 60s, entered the U.S. from Jordan in 1995 and became a naturalized citizen in 2004.

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[S]he’s commonly known as Rasmea Yousef in Chicago. Hatem Abudayyeh, head of the Arab American Action Network, called her an “icon” in the community.

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In 2013, Odeh received the Outstanding Community Leader award from the Chicago Cultural Alliance, a coalition of ethnic museums and cultural centers in the Chicago area.

What have I left out, you ask? Nothing important. Just a few dreary details that, well, uh…I mean…

Very well:

A Chicago activist might plead guilty in Detroit to failing to tell U.S. immigration officials about her conviction in a deadly bombing in Israel in 1969, her attorney said Saturday.

A court hearing is scheduled Wednesday for Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, associate director at the Arab American Action Network in Chicago.

“We are engaging in serious negotiations, which could lead to a guilty plea,” defense lawyer William Swor told The Associated Press. “If she enters a guilty plea, she will likely have to leave the country.”

Odeh’s case has angered pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. who accuse the government of trying to silence dissent on Israel.

…

She is charged with not disclosing her past when she applied for citizenship in Detroit.

Odeh was convicted of an attack that killed two people at a Jerusalem market in 1969. An Israeli military court sentenced her to life in prison in 1970, but she was released 10 years later in a prisoner swap with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Just for the record, another 20 people were injured in Ms. Odeh’s terrorist attack—just about one for every year she’s been in America.

Chicago doesn’t have much like with its “Outstanding Community Leaders”, does it?

A terrorist from Jordan briefly worked as an Obamacare navigator in Illinois while authorities remained unaware of her conviction for involvement in a deadly grocery store bombing and two other attacks.

Rasmieh Yousef Odeh was convicted in Israel for her role in several bombings, including the 1969 attack on an upscale Shufersol grocery store, which killed two Hebrew University students who had stopped in to buy groceries for a hiking trip in the Jerusalem hills. Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe were killed by a bomb hidden in a candy box tucked on a shelf, which also injured nine or 10 others, according to a website maintained by the Israeli government to commemorate terror victims.

The Illinois Department of Insurance quietly revoked Odeh’s certification as a Navigator In-Person Counselor on November 24, explaining in a disciplinary report that the decision was “based on an investigation which revealed that she had been convicted in Israel for her role in the bombings of a supermarket and the British Consulate in Jerusalem and failed to reveal the conviction on her application.” …

Odeh, who has as many as nine aliases, was indicted in October for allegedly lying on her U.S. immigration and naturalization application papers. On Dec. 9, 2004, she had been sworn in as a U.S. citizen in a district court in Michigan, the same state where bombing victim Kanner had spent six months studying English. …

Four people were killed and at least 35 have been wounded in shootings across the city since Friday night, Chicago Police said.

The most recent fatal shooting happened early Sunday in the Logan Square neighborhood, where a 21-year-old woman was gunned down while riding in a car on Fullerton Avenue near Kedzie Boulevard.

Cindy Bahena, 21, was a back-seat passenger in a car headed eastbound in the 3500 block of West Fullerton Avenue about 12:25 a.m. Sunday when a group of men standing on a sidewalk shouted gang slogans and fired shots, authorities said.

…

Police said the male driver of the vehicle is a known gang member, and Bahena was not the intended target of the shooting.

The dead never are. If all their gun laws can’t keep innocent citizens safe, can they at least teach the gang-bangers how to shoot straight?

Chicago students vying for hard-to-get spots in the city’s most competitive public high schools will get a new selective enrollment high school named after President Barack Obama.

For parents frustrated with a gut-wrenching process that some have compared to getting their child into an Ivy League school, 300 additional freshmen seats come as welcome news.

…

For Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the announcement, coupled with an earlier University of Chicago study released Thursday showing more freshmen are on track to graduate high school, was an opportunity to celebrate a new course for Chicago Public Schools.

“For the first time in the city of Chicago, I get to say that (U.S. Education) Secretary (William) Bennett, who in 1987 said the city of Chicago is the worst public school system in America, you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” Emanuel said.

And it only took you 27 years. Way to go, Chi-ca-go! But some people still aren’t happy:

Mayoral critics noted the $60 million high school was announced a day after CPS voted to turn over management of three failing schools in impoverished neighborhoods on the city’s West and South Sides to a private organization. They contend that instead of investing more resources in top-tier schools that serve a small number of students, the money should be used to help neighborhood schools across the city, many of which saw severe budget cuts this school year.

Some also wondered why Obama College Prep was not being built on the South Side in the president’s Kenwood neighborhood or in the community where First Lady Michelle Obama grew up, rather than among well-to-do North Siders.

Remember, Obama is half white, too. He represents all of us. Besides, he likes the Cubs as much as the White Sox:

Wow. “South Side kid”? He didn’t set foot in Chicago until he went there to organize communities at 24. No wonder he can’t remember a single ChiSox name. (The announcers let him off easy—I would have loved to hear him squirm trying to name any Oakland As players: “Uh… the truth is, I liked a lot of Giants, too…”)

The gap between Gakirah Barnes’s front teeth when she smiled, whether she was celebrating on the basketball court or messing around with friends, made her look even younger than the 17 years she spent in south Chicago before being shot to death last weekend.

“At least I don’t have to constantly worry about what’s going to happen to her out on the street no more,” said her mother, Shontell Brown, who wept as she inspected the cemetery plot where Gakirah will be buried on Monday. Her father, who was gunned down on her first Easter Sunday, lies nearby. Her twin brother, who saw his best friend murdered in 2011, will be at the funeral.

Though mourned as a victim by her family and her girlfriend, Gakirah – one of five Chicagoans killed and 36 wounded over the city’s warmest and bloodiest weekend of the year so far – was, according to police and neighbourhood sources, also part of the problem: a hip-hop-fuelled gang war that is raging even as Mayor Rahm Emanuel boasts that crime is at a record low.

Sweet girl that she was, Gakirah was not quite so sweet as my girl, Hadiya:

Nicknamed K I, Gakirah is said to have run with the STL-EBT crew, a young branch of the notorious Gangster Disciples, who have bedevilled the south side since the 1960s. As allies of Lil Jay, a local up-and-coming rapper, they clashed with boys from the nearby Parkway Gardens projects who are loyal to the rival Black Disciples, and to Jay’s more established nemesis, Keith “Chief Keef” Cozart, who is signed to Interscope Records, the home of superstars Dr Dre and Eminem.

Oh, okay. That explains everything.

Some at Parkway Gardens, which is nicknamed “O Block” in Perry’s memory, blame Gakirah for his death. “That’s false information,” said her mother. “Rip K I Da Shooter,” Lil Jay wrote under a picture of Gakirah pointing her hand like a gun that he posted to Instagram, after she was killed. The battle continued in the comments below. “This summer gone get real,” warned one user. As social media buzzed with accusations, Keno Glass, an aspiring rapper and cousin of Coleman, was shot dead in a drive-by at 2:40am on Tuesday. He was just 16.

What would people do to me if they learned I ran around with the Scarlatti gang? Dom probably had his enemies, same as everyone.

The Illinois Medicaid program paid an estimated $12 million for medical services for people listed as deceased in other state records, according to an internal state government memo.

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Auditors identified overpayments for services to roughly 2,900 people after the date of their deaths.

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The memo states that more than $7 million has been recovered and the rest is expected to be recouped by year’s end.

How do they do that? By digging up the bodies and selling their organs? Melting down their fillings? My arithmetic shows that the average stiff raked in $4,138. Unless they were buried in Versace, I don’t see how you can “recoup” that much money from dead people.

“It’s disappointing and somewhat enraging for taxpayers, but it’s not surprising,” Righter said. “I wish this administration would spend more time trying to solve the problems rather than trying to convince taxpayers that they’ve already solved them.”

That’s an Illinois State Senator talking about the Democrat Governor. But, boy, he could be talking about the federal administration, couldn’t he? Run by a former Illinois State Senator, I note. Who learned well.

In late March, the Chicago Board of Education announced an ambitious plan to implement its “turnaround” model for three low-performing elementary schools in poor, predominantly black neighborhoods.

The turnaround process involves the sacking of every teacher and staffer at each of the schools, according to an email from the Chicago Teachers Union obtained by The Daily Caller.

Naturally, the union bosses aren’t happy that the nation’s third-largest school district is employing such sweeping measures to improve some of its worst schools.

…

The email from the teachers union also suggested that the effort to improve the schools is an effort spearheaded by Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett to damage black children and black families.

“This is an attack on Black schools that continues the assault carried out by” Byrd-Bennett “last year, when she closed 50 schools (claiming they were the last closings for at least five years).”

Byrd-Bennett is black.

No way!

Way.

What is the insidious plan this Aunt Jemimah has in mind for black children?

One of the three schools facing turnaround plans is Ronald E. McNair Elementary School, which has been on academic probation for the past 14 years. Another school is Dvorak Technology Academy, which has been on academic probation for the past 7 years. The third school is Walter Q. Gresham Elementary School, which has been on academic probation for the past 6 years.

If the Board of Education approves the plan at its board meeting on April 23, the three schools will be managed by the Academy for Urban School Learning (AUSL), a nonprofit organization which already manages 29 public schools in Chicago where over 17,000 students are enrolled.

The turnaround process involves bringing in teachers and staffers who have been specifically trained to work in low-performing schools.

And we can’t have that.

Woody Guthrie once wrote the refrain, “You can’t scare me, I’m stickin’ to the union.” If it read today “stickin’ it to the union”, it would be relevant. The union sure has been sticking it to kids—black kids—for decades.